All die, all die, all die
all die, all die, all die, all die, all die
All die, all die, all die, seventeen times.

************NOTES & BACKSTORY:On Valentine’s Day 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz returned to the high school from which he was expelled and, carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, shot 32 people, wounding 15 and killing 17. This was immediately followed by the usual cacophony of liberals calling for gun control and Republicans saying that would be politicizing a tragedy and that we should all pray for the victims instead. As someone who doesn’t think reasonable gun control contradicts the second amendment, and, more importantly, as someone who loves pushing the envelope with sick songs, I thought it would be fun to pen a ditty from Cruz’s perspective. As a kid, I loved Ringo Starr’s version of the Sherman Brothers’ “Your Sixteen,” and somehow, a day after the slaughter, the song popped into my mind (especially thanks to the sixteen/fifteen similarity).
It wasn’t until I started putting a homemade rendition of the song (using a karaoke backing track) on Audacity a day later that I thought of including sound bytes. Those, with interjections by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Lori Alhadeff, the mother of one of the victims, ended up turning the finished song into a more serious plea for gun control than the lyrics alone show. And if you’re keeping score, this adds to my roster of compositions whose protagonists are murdering psychos (“Killing the Candidates,” “Psycho Blues,” “Bad, Bad Man,” “Sugar, Spice, and a Very Sharp Axe,” “A Day in the Life (of a Psychopath),” etcetera, etcetera, and so forth.
To hear my rendition of “AR-15,” here’s the youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMQ9mutrCuc&feature=youtu.be

(sung to the melody of the traditional spiritual, “He’s Got the Whole World In his Hands”)

He’s got the shithole world in his hands
He’s got the shithole world in his hands
He’s got the shithole world in his hands
He’s got the whole shithole in his hands

He’s got Pakistan and Haiti in his hands
He’s got the Cuban and Kuwaiti in his hands
He’s got Ned and Warren Beatty in his hands
He’s got the whole shithole in his hands

He’s got Suriname and China in his hands
He’s got Chad and Argentina in his hands
He’s got the Faso that’s Burkina in his hands
He’s got the whole shithole in his hands

He’s got Cameroon and Cuba in his hands
He’s got murder in Aruba in his hands
He’s got boys who play the tuba in his hands
He’s got the whole shithole in his hands

He’s got Syria and Thailand in his hands
He’s got each Marshall Island in his hands
This land ain’t your land or my land, in his hands
He’s got the whole shithole in his hands

If you aren’t a Caucasian in this land
If you’re of African persuasion in this land
We’re gonna stop your invasion of this land
`Cause our shithole’s bigger than yours

So if you’re standing in the doorway of our land
Turn around and go back your way from our land
Unless you are from Norway to our land
He’s got the whole shithole in his hands

He’s got the shithole world in his hands
He’s got the shithole world in his hands
He’s got the shithole world in his hands
He’s got the whole shithole in his hands

*****

NOTES & BACKSTORY:
Penned Jan. 12, 2018 specifically for performance on my weekly radio show, Dave’s Gone By, this tune was a fun reaction to reports of a meeting about immigration with congressional lawmakers in which President Trump allegedly asked the assembled, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump detractors saw this as the culmination of his history of racially insensitive remarks, while defenders noted that if these countries weren’t shitholes, why were all these immigrants so desperate to jump ship? For me, the whole tempest was just an excuse to revel in the sight—and sound—of all these serious newscasters endlessly repeating the word “shithole” with a straight face (that means you, CNN’s Don Lemon!).
Oh, and speaking of keeping score, this is my second song parody of “He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands.” The first was 2017’s “In his Ass.” Shitholes, indeed.

(Sung to the melody of the traditional spiritual, “He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands”)

He’s got the whole world in his ass
He’s got the whole wide world in his ass
He’s got the whole world in his ass
He’s got the whole wide world in his ass

He’s got an $80 wristwatch
in his ass
He’s got a pair of salad tongs
in his ass
He’s got a live baby octopus
in his ass
He’s got the whole world in his ass

He’s got a can of Coca Cola
in his ass
He’s got a 40-watt lightbulb
in his ass
He’s got a Valencia orange
in his ass
He’s got the whole wide world in his ass

He’s got an old, broken Trojan
in his ass
He’s got three human fingernails
in his ass
He’s got my high school ring!
in his ass
He’s got the whole wide world in his ass

(Note: in concert, do one more verse with the audience shouting out suggestions)

So if you’re gonna put something in your ass
Make sure it’s something that will pass
Or else you’ll be in the ER, with blood and gas
And the whole wide world in your ass.

We’ve got the whole world in our ass
We’ve got the whole wide world in our ass
We’ve got the whole world in our ass
We’ve got the whole wide world in our ass!

NOTES & BACKSTORY:This is one of those songs where the idea and the finished song were less than a half hour apart. Many years ago, an old schoolmate who’d become a doctor shared stories of items he’d found—and had to extract—from patients when he was a resident. I don’t remember most them, though I do recall a light bulb being in there somewhere. Staggeringly enough, this is not the first song about household items finding their way into intimate places. Even before South Park’s beloved Lemmiwinks, William Finn’s great musical, Falsettoland, featured a nurse singing about her run-of-the-mill day and recalling, “Heart attacks and gallstones, light bulbs up the ass.”I proudly contribute to this sub-sub-genre and am grateful to several websites which not only list rectally sequestered items but show the x-rays as proof. What a wonderful world! Just a year later, I would write another parody of the same traditional song, “He’s Got the Shithole World (In his Hands)” as a playfully political riff on Donald Trump’s views on America.

I’m rugged, I’m hairy
I’m dangerous and scary
I should be locked up when I go off my meds

They say I’m from Hades
When I get with ladies
They’re playing with fire . . . and they’re losing their heads.

There’s a girl in Omaha
fucked her ma, killed her pa
can’t go back to Omaha
I’m a bad, bad man

There’s a girl in Stowe, Vermont
Couldn’t give me what I want
Aimed a shotgun at her cunt
I’m a bad, bad man

There’s a girl in Sedona
Who gives me a bona
So is it such a sin
To slice off all her skin?

There’s a girl I almost wed
You can find her in my shed
can’t believe how much she bled
I’m a bad, bad man

There’s a judge in San Antone
he would not leave me alone
I just boiled his femur bone
I’m a bad, bad man

What I find erotic
The world calls psychotic
I go completely ape
When I maim and kill and rape

There’s a man in Kalamazoo
He said things that weren’t true
Bits of him are in my poo
I’m a bad, bad man.

So I go from door to door
Looking for the perfect whore
Better not say any more . . . (ding dong sound effect)
I’m a bad, bad man.

**************
NOTES & BACKSTORY:As with so many of my songs, the first verse comes to me in a flash, and then decades pass before I can find my way through to the end. In this case, the Omaha stanza came to me the first time I heard Annie Get Your Gun, and I’d sing my demented version, to anyone who’d listen, for years. It wasn’t until November 2017 that I took another crack at the rest of the tune and was able to add the “wed,” “judge,” and “Kalamazoo” verses. I also penned some other lines that, upon reflection weeks later, I found less than satisfying (see below). Finally, Jan. 21, 2018 saw the completion of the song, including the pre-amble, the bridges, and the Stowe stanza.
If nothing else, this song proves that Nick Cave doesn’t have the monopoly on songs about sociopaths. In fact, my oeuvre has long been littered with murder ballads concerning animal abuse (“Fun in the Kitchen”), child abuse (“The Rectum of Edmund Fitzgerald,” “The Kosher Hot Dog Picnic”), and plain-old human abuse (“Killing the Candidates,” “A Day in the Life (of a Psychopath),” “Sniper’s Lullaby,” “Psycho Blues”). If I ever do become a mass murderer, court-appointed psychiatrists could indict me on my lyrics alone. (Hopefully, the jurors would have a sense of humor; I wouldn’t want to have to kill them, too.)
For posterity’s sake, here are the 2017 verses—including the preamble—that were then replaced in 2018. I admit, I miss the “Dover” bit.

Hello folks, You know, folks, Most people are slowpokes They natter and very little gets done

Yeah, it’s pretty clear, I’m just an old Yid
But I can teach the alphabet just like my zayde did
Bar Mitzvah boys come to learn to be a man
Their heads are full of junk, but I do the best I can.

If Hebrew’s too tough, I do phonetic
Whatever gets them in a mode that’s alphabetic
Each letter has a vowel; each vowel has a note
You know that some words have a “chuch” in them, and phlegm goes through your throat

Yeah, I tell all my students, “Don’t worry if you cannot sing.
You’ll still get the gifts and the checks that your relatives bring.
And if you just get the words right, it’s fine if you’re hard on the ears.
You’re a 12-year-old kid, and no one’s expecting Jan Peerce.”

Well, kametz aleph ahh.
And follow that with kametz beis for bah.
And all the way to kametz taf for tah.
I’m here to teach them:

How to be a big sensation
When you’re doing cantillation

You know, I tell all my students they’ve got to sing loud, high, and strong
Because the Haftorah’s short, but the Torah is so frigging long.
You can prove to your peers that you’re clearly a mensch and a smarty
While your mom and your dad, they spend 85 grand on a party

This one’s cute and light and, in a rarity, doesn’t touch the darker places the Rabbi usually goes. As soon as we wrote it (on May 16, 2017), I could imagine actual Jewish bands like Six13 doing it. In fact, I’m afraid to check if they already have…

I got GERD, which is a reflux disease
And I suffer burning diarrhea
Yeah, diarrhea
Diarrhea
Yeah I shake my aching tush with diarrhea
I’m too sensual for strep
Too sensual for strep
But do I
Have it?
Yep.

I got gout, and my foot’s turning green
And I’m paying extra for a CAT scan
Yeah, a CAT scan
Oy, a CAT scan
I’m gonna take another turn under the CAT scan.

Like many people, I’d remembered the Right Said Fred song, “I’m Too Sexy,” with a jokey fondness and then renewed my affection for it when Taylor Swift sampled its beat for her 2017 tune, “Look What You Made Me Do.” The weekend after she released her song, the Rabbi and I youtubed the original and found ourselves immediately chanting, “I’m too sexy for my prostate.” A day later, we had the entire parody done.
We remain especially pleased with our direct references to RSF, including the tush-shaking bit and turning catwalk into CAT scan.
Don’t worry, there will not be an eight-minute club mix of this. There is, however, a recording of the Rabbi sprechtstimming it: https://youtu.be/6sR0nm0SVS0